


Through Another's Eyes

by Faebreath



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Anal Sex, Book 01: The Way of Kings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Power Dynamics, Self-Esteem Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, Teasing, Topping from the Bottom, Trauma, Yes you read the pairing right, enemies with benefits to friends with benefits, horribly ooc but let's not worry about that, smut with feelings, this is a gaz appreciation fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:42:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28761987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faebreath/pseuds/Faebreath
Summary: As Kaladin and the rest of Bridge Four began to settle into a routine, he and Gaz were exchanging more than clearchips. Not that either of them were looking for more than a quick way to relieve some tension.Obviously.
Relationships: Kaladin/Gaz
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22





	Through Another's Eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheCynicalSquid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCynicalSquid/gifts).



> at the time of writing I'm only halfway through words of radiance, so apologies for any problems with continuity (and no spoilers please!)
> 
> i can't believe i a) actually ship this and b) actually wrote this. @TheCynicalSquid, i blame you...

Kaladin sat with his back against a rain barrel, a cracked stone cup in his hands, trying to breathe evenly. Practising with the spare lumber was getting easier by the day, but it was still taxing, and at moments like this he cursed his own stubbornness to the next Highstorm. 

Bridge Four sat in a loose ring around the ashes of last night’s fire, playing Toss-To-The-Winds with a mixture of clearchips and pebbles. Kaladin smiled at their laughter and ribbing, so impossible to imagine just a week or so ago, but he waved away Rock’s call for him to join in. He was far too comfortable where he was. 

Across from the lumberyard he saw Gaz, looking to be in a predictably dark mood. The older man met his eyes with a glare; whether he was annoyed by Kaladin’s idleness, his practice at the lumberyard, or simply by his continued existence, it was impossible to tell. Probably it was all three.

(And if the glare happened to make a certain bite mark between Kaladin’s shoulderblades sting a little — well. That was nobody’s business but his own.)

Kaladin was — luckily — shaken away from such thoughts by the appearance of Syl, a ribbon twisting into a woman who looked like she wanted to dip her toes in the cup of water. She followed his line of sight as he took another sip; Gaz had moved on to barking orders at the men of Bridge Twelve.

Syl looked like she was considering a problem. She hopped up to her usual place on Kaladin’s shoulder.

“You don’t like him, do you?”

“Who, Gaz?” The spren nodded. “Have I been that subtle?”

She looked even more confused. Kaladin sighed. “No, Syl. I don’t like him.”

Syl nodded, slowly. “So why,” she asked, arranging her skirts in a ruffle of light, “are you fucking him?”

She danced neatly out of the way as Kaladin choked on a mouthful of rainwater.

“What — who —” There were a lot of ways Kaladin could go with that next sentence. In the end he settled on, “where did you hear that word?”

“What’s wrong with it? I hear it all the time, Kal.”

Kal groaned inwardly.  _ Well, that’s what happens when you gain sentience in a warcamp, I suppose.  _ “Just — don’t say things like that, all right?”

“Why not? It means mating, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. No. I suppose so. Just —”

“And you  _ were _ mating with Gaz, weren’t you?”

“No!”

Syl frowned. “But I saw you! He was on —”

“SYL!” A few labourers looked over at his outburst. Kal hoped they couldn’t see the extent of his blush. “First of all, you can  _ never _ — appear — when I’m — with anyone else. Like that. Understand?"

She nodded, although she looked as though she had been forbidden from reading the most interesting book in a grand library. 

“Second, we were  _ not _ … doing what you just said.”

“No?”

“No.” Stormfather, he was  _ not  _ having this conversation. “We were just. Uh. Relieving tension.”

“Relieving tension… by not-mating… with someone you don’t like?” Syl shook her head. “Humans are  _ weird, _ Kaladin. Have I ever mentioned that before?”

“Once or twice.” Even as Kal moved pointedly to lift the piece of lumber again, however, he made a mental note to find himself near Gaz’s tent that night.

***

It wasn’t hard to manage; no-one cared what bridgemen did in their spare time, after all. Kal lifted one corner of Gaz’s tent flap. “Bridge sergeant?”

He waited for a response. Gaz knew what he wanted; it was a code word of sorts, for Kal to use his actual rank. But there was no reply. That was strange; Kal had seen his shadow moving on the tent wall. Kal peered in, unsure. “Gaz?”

“Out.” The older man was sitting on the floor of the tent, his back against the tiny bed, his one eye closed. “I’ve got reports.”

“Good night to you too.”

“Out.”

Something was wrong, although it was hard to say what. Kal didn’t mind being turned down, and Gaz’s unfriendliness didn’t bother him, either. It was the reason they met like this, after all: a chance to take their jibes further than they could in the cold, filthy light of war. There was never affection — at least none that either of them would admit — but there was at least  _ heat. _

Gaz sounded cold.

“Gaz, are you —”

“ _ Out. _ ” 

As Lirin might have said, Kal was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a fool. He headed out into the chill night air, frowning up at the first moon. 

“That was quick, this time.” His spren played at being a blue star for a moment, before dropping down onto his shoulder. 

“Syl, can you just —” He cut himself off, surprised at how bitter he sounded. What was it to him if his ‘sparring partner’ was troubled? After all, as Syl herself had pointed out, he didn’t even like the man. “Can you just go and see if the usual spot is safe?”

Kal thought she looked at him oddly, but she zipped away into the night without a word. He hadn’t planned on collecting the knobweed sap tonight, but it seemed like any other plans he might have had had just been cancelled. 

Best not to think of such things. Best, as he felt the cold of the ground seep through his thin leather sandals, as he watched his breath condense in the air, not to think of the hot, heavy weight of a man on top of him, the all-encompassing scent of sweat and musk and worked leather. Best to think instead of how to keep his men alive, how to make the knobweed sap last the longest, how to keep Sadeas off their back.

Best to put on, again, the identity of leader and spearman and surgeon, piece by heavy piece. 

He managed to keep his thoughts on this track until he found himself staring into the chasm, deep and dark enough that he could watch each scrap of knobweed melt slowly into nothing. The wretch was still down there, Kal knew. If Gaz turned him out of his bed for good, if he couldn’t distract himself and have any respite from the weight on his shoulders, would he be able to keep it from climbing back up? 

A crunch in the stones behind him jolted him out of his dark thoughts. Instinctively he put a hand to his non-existent spear, cursing himself for not paying double the attention, given that he was here without Rock or Teft. But Syl hadn’t even — 

His train of thought screeched to a halt when he saw who it was standing behind him, staring into the abyss he himself had been so fixated on a moment before. 

Gaz.

He looked different to how Kal had ever seen him before. There was that same tired look that he always seemed to wear, yes, but layered over it was  _ nothing: _ no anger, no impatience, no smirk. Just emptiness. Like the chasm in front of them. 

Like Kaladin had once looked.

Kaladin should have been worried Gaz had noticed the knobweed stems; should have kicked them over the edge, thought quickly, made up an excuse. Instead he got half to his feet, uncertain, thrown off balance, but sure he had to say  _ something. _

“Gaz, what —” 

Kal had assumed that Gaz had been choosing to ignore him; even in the dark, he wasn’t particularly hard to spot. The bridge sergeant must have been lost even deeper in thought than Kaladin, though, because at the sound of Kal’s voice he practically jumped out of his skin.

And then tried to regain his balance. And then failed, and slipped over the edge of the chasm.

There was no time even for instinct. Kal  _ hurled  _ himself sideways at Gaz’s body, already too late to stop him, but just able to grab him around the waist. Breathless from shock, and at a supremely awkward angle, he lay along the very rim of the chasm, face buried in the crook of Gaz’s neck. His body hung in Kal’s arms as if it had already hit the ground. 

Kal was a fair bit taller than Gaz, but the older man was heavier, and it was as if something, something as heavy as despair and as clinging as doubt, was pulling him down into the depths.  _ You cannot have him!  _ Snarled Kal in his mind, and he was surprised at his own vehemence. Gaz was nothing like Cenn, or Dunny, or Tien. He wasn’t innocent, or kind, or even a particularly good person.  _ I don’t like him, _ Kal had said, and it was true.

But he held on.

Just visible in one of Gaz’s pockets, a clearchip — the one Kal had given him the day before — drained of light.

And then Kal was hauling the weight of him back onto solid ground, and rolling away from him and onto his back, breathing hard. Far above them, a starspren shivered.

“Bastard.” Gaz’s voice was the same as it had been back in his tent: cold and numb and blank. 

A flash of real anger dampened Kal’s worry. “Bastard? I just saved your storming  _ life! _ ”

“And who asked you to? Eh?” Gaz shoved him in the chest, with those big, rough hands Kal had been growing acquainted with. “Who asked you to barge in here and try to save me, or your miserable crempile of a bridgecrew, or every darkeyes in the whole storming warcamp?” His voice was heating up now, but the words stung too much for Kal to feel any relief. “Acting like a hero from the old stories. Well, I’m not in them.”

He shifted away, and now he and Kal were facing away from each other: Kal at the scattered lights of the warcamp, and Gaz back into the chasm. 

His shoulders were still slumped, as if in defeat. But he didn’t move, either to turn away, or — Kal swallowed — to step into the darkness.

Across the camp, the wind caught one of Sadeas’ banners, and tossed it back and forth. 

“You never asked me, Gaz,” said Kal softly. “I know that. But can I help you anyway?”

Something seemed to go out of the older man at his words; Kal shifted, half-expecting to have to move to catch him again, but Gaz stood steady. Inwardly, Kal chided himself; wasn’t that exactly what Gaz had been talking about? He was a soldier with far more experience than Kal, and here was Kal treating him like a child to be saved from an axehound. 

“You’d be wasting your time,” said Gaz into the darkness.

“Then I’ll be a fool, and you’ll be proved right.” Neither of them moved. “Gaz. I’m not going to leave, until —” It seemed like an embarrassingly delicate thing to say to  _ Gaz, _ of all people, but it had been what Lirin had taught him to say in situations like this — “until I know you’re safe.”

Gaz grunted. It was his familiar, get-back-to-storming-work-lordling grunt, and Kal had never thought he would be so pleased to hear it. “A bit of crem I can’t scrape of my boot, you are.”

Kal smiled.

***

With every step away from the chasm, Kal’s tension eased a little. He knew from experience how hard it was to walk away; it was as if the chasm itself had a kind of terrible magnetism to it, as if the weight of all the poor souls who lay down there pulled on the living. 

Leaving that place — going to Gaz’s cramped tent for the second time that night, knocking together a fire strong enough to boil water for tea — didn’t fix things, of course. But it was something.

He put a cup of the tea firmly in Gaz’s hands. Then he hesitated, before touching the shoulders of Gaz’s coat: a silent question. Gaz paused, but nodded, and Kal took it off for him, feeling absurdly shy as he did so. In all their dalliances, they had never undressed each other, or even tried to. 

Kal draped the jacket over the back of the tent’s single chair, taking a moment to touch the white knots on the shoulders. He remembered seeing them, seeing Gaz, for the first time:  _ this man’s seen war. _

“None of us are heroes, Gaz,” he said quietly. “We’re the dregs. The forgotten. The slaves.” He touched the brand on his forehead. “But we’re all we’ve got.” He straightened up. “So, will you tell me why?”

Gaz snorted. “Would you ask the rest of the poor sods down there that?”

“You’re not a bridgeman. You’ve got a tent, a brazier, a bed of your own.”

“Think the lighteyes care about any of that? You said it yourself, kid. We’re all crem to those bastards.”

“And you care what they see you as?”

Gaz barked a laugh at that. “I care what  _ I  _ see them as.” When Kal looked lost, he tapped the brow of his missing eye. “Shadows, kid. There and then not there.” He glanced off to the side as he said it, as if illustrating the point. “I used to be good with a spear. One of the best.” Kal felt a flash of recognition at the words. “Do you know what the lighteyes captain said to me, when I woke up in the surgeon’s tent?”

“...No.”

“ _'_ _ You only lost one.’  _ And that was that. Patched me up, shoved me into a corner somewhere.” Gaz shook his head, closing his one eye. “That storming  _ darkness _ — well, I figured I might as well make it complete.”

Kal looked down at the pain in the man’s voice. He remembered a day in the surgery, after Lirin had amputated three fingers of a farmer’s right hand. Kal had been humming something as he cleaned the room, and Lirin had been truly angry at him — one of the few times Kal had seen him come close to losing his temper.

_ A man’s life was changed today, Kaladin,  _ he’d said.  _ You’d do well to show a little more respect. _

Kal had grown up seeing farmhands and carpenters missing fingers; it had never occurred to him that each one was its own trauma. When he’d seen Gaz, he realised, he’d seen the evidence of battle experience, but not the wound. Lirin would have shook his head at that. 

_ Like the lighteyes see my slave brand as a glyph, not as a scar.  _ When had he started thinking like them?

He took a breath. He knew what he wanted to do, suddenly, although it seemed so alien to how he normally — conducted himself — with Gaz. Carefully, he went and sat next to the other man on the bed. He touched the man’s brow, with the very tip of his fingers. Gaz didn’t move.

“May I?”

Almost imperceptibly, Gaz nodded.

Kal was glad of his surgeon's training then, as his hands barely shook as he explored up to the very edge of the mass of scar tissue where Gaz’s eye should have been. 

“It might’ve looked heroic, that scar,” said Gaz gruffly; Kal could feel his breath against his hand. “I’ve seen portraits. Of old lighteyed generals. Nobles.”

“I won’t say it looks noble, Gaz, because it doesn’t. It’s a bad scar; a bad wound, and one that wasn’t treated as well as it should have been, I think.” Gaz looked at him then; Kal wondered if he was going to ask how he knew that, and carried on before he could. “I hate that — that it causes you such pain.” He took a breath. “But I’m glad of it, as well. Because I’d rather you were alive than dead.”

Gaz chuckled, low and sad, but real. “Lordling, indeed. Where’d a slave get a silver tongue like that, eh?” He ran a thumb over Kal’s lower lip as he said it, making him flush.

“I can share it, if you’d like.” Storms, they should  _ not  _ be doing this. But Kaladin knew the way men might roll into each other’s beds after a battle — he’d done it himself, a few times — and this was not, it occurred to him, so different.

So, when Gaz brought his lips to his, he opened them to him with a broken-off sigh. Through the taste of beer and the scratch of stubble, Kal realised he had never actually kissed Gaz before. In fact, despite the fact that he and Gaz had been taking out their frustrations on one another for the better part of a month, so much of this was new: the slowness of of Gaz’s hand as it moved up Kaladin’s thigh; how careful Kal was as he brushed Gaz’s straggling hair away from his face.

Not only was it new, but it was also breathtakingly  _ better.  _ Kal realised that he was embarrassingly hard just from kissing like this. His state was obvious through the thin, cheap stuff of his bridgeman’s trousers, and a shiver went up Kal’s spine when Gaz smirked at the sight. 

“Missed me that much tonight, eh?”

Kal opened his mouth for a retort, but promptly forgot it as the older man palmed his cock through his trousers. “Gaz —” Just that one syllable seemed about all he could manage. Storms, why did he feel like a youth at his first tumble?

Gaz’s only answer was to kiss him again, this time bearing him back onto the bed as he did so. Kal let him, running his hands over his back both for comfort and to let him know how much he wanted this, wanted him to keep going. 

Once they were more or less horizontal, and half or less dressed, Kal hooked his legs around Gaz’s waist, pulling him against him, hissing as their arousals ground together. He pulled back a little to focus on Gaz’s face, flushed and breathing hard. 

“Are you sure that this is — that you’re all right?”

Gaz’s blush deepened. How long had it been, Kal wondered, since someone had truly taken care of him? “Yeah,” he said, managing a fair approximation of his usual gruff tone. “Anyway, seems I owe you something. For — what you did back there.”

Kal thought he had a pretty good idea what ‘something’ might be, and his hopes were confirmed when Gaz scrambled off of him to find something that had rolled under the bed. Heart thumping, Kal hurriedly kicked his trousers off from where they had gotten caught around one ankle. He half-sat up on one hand as Gaz joined him on the bed again, the vial of oil in one hand, but Gaz shoved him back so that he landed with a thump against the pillows. This slight roughness was more familiar; Kal let out a little gasp of anticipation. 

He was also used to the sweet burn as Gaz’s finger pushed inside of him. “ _ Yes, _ ” he groaned, stretching one leg up onto Gaz’s shoulder to encourage the other man to keep going, to hurry up and fuck him.

Normally, Gaz would have wasted no time in doing so. They both liked it quick and dirty, after all; but this time, Gaz seemed in no hurry, even as Kal growled and nudged at his back with his foot.

“Patience, lordling,” chuckled Gaz, low and dark, as he  _ finally  _ slid in a second finger. Kal bucked back against it, getting desperate, sweat breaking out on his forehead. 

“ _ This  _ is my reward for saving your life?” He managed, one hand over his eyes, the other twisting in the blanket. No matter how he moved his hips, Gaz kept the movement of his fingers maddeningly teasing. 

“Huh. I guess you’re right, lordling.” Gaz had moved so that his voice came from above Kaladin, near his ear. “How’s this?” Without further warning, he angled the next thrust of his fingers right against that  _ perfect  _ spot. Kal gasped, back arching. 

“That’s — ah —” Words didn’t seem to be Kal’s strongpoint at the moment. “ _ Gaz, _ ” he managed, finally, and he heard the sergeant give a murmur of triumph as he made to roll Kaladin onto his stomach.

That was how they had always fucked before, but, this time, something made Kal reach up and stop Gaz with a hand on his shoulder. Before Gaz could ask, it was Kal’s turn to have him flat on his back.  _ Maybe  _ I  _ can be the one to take care of him, tonight. _

“Yes?” He asked on a breath, straddling the other man and leaning over him until their faces almost touched. 

“I — yes,” Gaz looked up at him, almost disbelieving. “If you really…”

_ I do, _ thought Kal. Instead of saying it out loud, though, he just allowed himself to sink down onto Gaz’s cock, biting his lip both at the feeling and at the way Gaz groaned and clutched at Kal’s hips.

Now that Kal was the one in control, he wasted no time in giving them both what they wanted. Soon he found a rhythm that had Gaz biting back curses; Kal gave a little laugh of pleasure. It was so  _ good, _ to see his lover’s face, to meet his eyes. Why hadn’t they done this before?

...Except maybe there was a clue, in the way Gaz’s eyes, even now, flicked away from his, to the dark corners of the tent.  _ Shadows, _ Gaz had said.  _ There and not there. _

_ What would that be like, to never know yourself safe?  _ Kal’s heart twisted; he knew better than most, after all, the agony of a friend sticking a dagger in your back. He reached down and put a hand on the scarred side of Gaz’s face, gently turning it up to face him. Gaz’s eye flicked away, but Kaladin held it with his own.

“You’re safe,” he murmured, choosing that moment to snap his hips down at a particularly wicked angle, smiling through parted lips when he saw Gaz’s breath catch. “It’s just you and me here.”

“Ah…” Gaz’s mouth half-formed around some quip or other, but it died before it could reach his lips. Instead, he reached up to thumb Kal’s nipples, an expression of surprised near-awe on his face. Kal shivered, wriggling against Gaz’s stomach and losing his rhythm somewhat. Storms, he was so close that even that tiny extra stimulation had come close to bringing him off. 

“Look at me, Gaz,” he purred, tilting the older man’s chin up, running a thumb over his lower lip. “Just… look at me.

“Storms,  _ Kaladin, _ ” Gaz gasped. Kaladin’s breath caught; it was the first time the sergeant had ever used his name. Kal hadn’t even been sure he’d remembered it. 

“That’s right.” He met the other man’s gaze and held it. For once, no anger clouded Gaz’s face, no worry or grudge. “Me.” Several gloryspren, like drops of golden light, bubbled up around Kal’s head at the sight. He wasn’t lost to killing, not completely. He could still heal, too.

He ducked his head and Gaz met his mouth with his, their kisses fiercer and yet somehow all the more tender than they had been earlier. Slowly, Gaz’s hands left off from where they had been knotted in Kal’s hair to travel down his back and grip him by the hips, until he was being rammed down onto Gaz’s cock at a pace that had him scrabbling at the bedsheets for purchase. 

Gaz’s kisses moved down onto his neck, each as searing as burnt prayer of thanks; he was close, too, his muscles trembling under Kal’s hands. “Come for me, lordling,” he growled, biting at the base of his throat.

Whether it was the bolt of pleasurable pain, the tone of Gaz’s voice, or the way he blended their old animosity with their newfound affection, Kaladin wasn’t sure, but he found himself coming hard enough that spren-like lights seemed to burst before his eyes. He felt Gaz finding his own end inside him, and could only let out a choked breath, keeping himself half-upright with one arm braced against the older man’s chest. And then even that gave out, and he felt big, scarred hands catch him as he fell.

***

Kal came to around half — well, maybe a third — of his senses to find himself slumped forward, eyes closed, head resting against Gaz’s chest. He heard a groan from near his ear, and then felt himself being rolled off and onto the other side of the tiny bed, one arm dangling. Next to him, Gaz blew out a breath.

“Well, I guess there might be  _ something _ to stay out of the Halls for.”

Kal grinned, rather stupidly, up at the roof of the tent. “Glad to be of service, sergeant.” 

He heard Gaz getting up and rummaging around for a moment, before the feeling of something cold and damp between his legs made him actually  _ whimper. _ Storms, he had felt sore after a fuck before, but never quite so used-up. “What —”

“Don’t want you to ruin my sheets, lordling,” Gaz muttered, although his deep blush belied his tone — as did his unmistakable, yes,  _ tenderness  _ as he cleaned Kaladin up.

Kal blinked; he usually would have wiped himself up as he got dressed, as soon as they were finished. Why would he — “Oh.” Wincing a little, he shifted around until Gaz could fit next to him on the bed with minimal grumbling. Really, Kal reasoned, it wasn’t surprising that Gaz might not want to be alone that night. That logic didn’t stop the warm flutter in his chest as Gaz pulled the blanket over both of them. 

He woke just as the light of the third moon began to fade: not even dawn, but he wanted to get back to the barracks in time to get some practising in before waking the rest of Bridge Four. He yawned and stretched, and then stopped short: the space next to him on the bed was cold. Gaz sat with his back to him, head lowered.

Before Kal could open his mouth, Gaz spoke. “I know — well, I don’t know the details. Never been very good at knowing details. But I know you’re planning something, lordling. Planning something big.”

Kal looked at the blanket, bunched up under his hand.

“I can’t help you.” Gaz’s voice was gruff with some emotion Kal found it hard to identify. “I wish I could. Or — I wish I wanted to. But — that’s not the man I am. Not anymore.”

“If you turned me in,” Kal said, slowly, “Things would be a lot easier for you. And they’d probably pay you more than a few clearchips for the information.”

Gaz said nothing.

“I’m not going to ask you to — to stick a dagger in Lanaril’s back, or anything like that.” No point in being coy. “But — you  _ are  _ helping, Gaz.” He managed a smile. “Whether you think you are or not.”

Gaz cleared his throat. “Well. Uh. Just don’t trust me to keep any secrets, all right?”

“All right,” said Kal. He was grinning, although he wasn’t sure why.

He got up and pulled on his trousers, shrugging his vest on as he lifted the flap of the tent. Then he paused, halfway between the intimate warmth of the tent and the brisk chill of the camp. “You might not be that man, now Gaz,” he said, voice almost a whisper. “But I believe you can be again, one day.”

He stepped out into the half-light before he could tell if Gaz had heard or not.

Before he had gone three paces, he spotted a ribbon of light shooting down from the sky. He blushed; he had been — indisposed — for far longer than he ever had before, and Syl would surely demand an explanation. 

And, as he saw the light twist itself into a young woman with her arms crossed, Kaladin realised he had no idea what to tell her. 


End file.
